Workshop accessible content

How do you create content that can be understood by everyone, also for people that use the web in another way than you would expect? Keeping your content accessible isn’t hard. You just need to look at your text differently.

In this workshop, we’ll tell you what is important to keep your content accessible and also why. Have you ever ‘listened’ to your own website, how accessible is your content? We will talk about headings, images, links, video and audio.

Did you know Google is blind and deaf? Everything you do for accessibility is also good for SEO!

Introduction

Web accessibility is the degree to which a website is usable by as many people as possible.

We don’t all use the web always the same way. When adding responsive design we create a site accessible on desktop with different browsers and screen sizes, and also for different kind of mobile devices used with a mouse or touch.

We don’t always use the web the same way or in optimal circumstances. For example: reading on a smartphone in the sun in a noise environment is different than reading on a desktop in a quiet office.

In the future there will be even more options and technology, as we use the web not exclusively in our office or at home anymore. Not only people with a disability, but everyone that has an online connection will benefit from a robust and accessible website.

Change your point of view!
Don’t depend on how the website looks, but how the content is structured.

Under the hood

Reading level

Keep the reading level: 12 years old maximum.
Why? When you write at a high reading level, you expect that the reader it her best when she reads this. Maybe the reader is tired, hungover, in a car, distracted by the TV or annoyed by a nagging child.

Images

If an image has meaning: give a short describing alternative text, don’t use this as spamming tool, keep it to the point

Don’t use “image of” in the alt text. A screen reader already announces the image as image

If the image is a chart or an infographic, add an alternative in content, on the same page or on a different page and and link that

Video

Use Subtitles: not only useful for deaf people, but also for example when useful you are in the train and forgot your headset, your native language differs, there is much background noise and you can’t hear it well.

Do not autoplay: screen reader users can’t hear their software speaking. Your spouse will wake up if you forgot to turn off the sound when you work in bed.

Audio

Transcript the text, write it out. Provide a link to that text below the audio track and do not autoplay (same as video)

Alternative text, subtitles and transcriptions are content Google can read. So this is valuable content to add for SEO.